Feb 15 2010
Pip and the Buddha
While reading chapter 93, The Castaway, a striking resemblance was drawn between Pip’s enlightenment and the foundation of Buddhism. Although I concede that Melville was–quite obviously–Christian and the entire book is dripping with biblical allusions, I find this sequence of events to be Melville’s way of giving other religions a “cameo,” so to speak.
Before Pip goes overboard, he is nervous and emotional. In Buddhism, the goal of enlightenment is to achieve nirvana and escape from the endless cycle of suffering that plagues human existence. In the most basic Buddhist scriptures, a normal, seemingly happy person undergoes suffering. This person could be Pip: he has his troubles but never bothers to rid himself of them. The only possible escape is salvation or heaven, which can be achieved if he lives a moral, proper, Christian life. Buddhism rejects the existence of a superior being and salvation. The ultimate goal is enlightenment and understanding, and sins are accepted as normal human behavior.
The reason I think Pip goes through a Buddhist-like enlightenment is because he has an incredible and frightening encounter with nature at its purest: he is left in the middle of the ocean. The first buddha–with the intention of gaining enlightenment (this is the primary difference between the two stories)–sits under a bodhi tree and opens his mind to nature and nothing else; eventually gaining perfect understanding of the universe. The buddha “comes at last to celestial thought” (Melville 372), just as Pip does.
The ship mates call Pip mad when he tries to describe his experience because they are not used to such philosophical and metaphysical ideas. Buddhism–or any Eastern spirituality–had not yet been introduced to places outside its native India and surrounding countries, and Americans were very set in their religious ways. Melville acknowledges this by calling this foreign religious experience “absurd and frantic” (372).
Furthermore, Pip’s concrete belief in Christianity, God, heaven, etc. would make such an enlightenment very unsettling and damaging to his mind. Christianity leaves little room for the awareness and understanding present in Buddhism, because Christians are instructed to place all their hope and trust in God. For Pip, the disenchantment with the beliefs he’s carried for his entire life would make him, as the ship mates call him, “mad.” This would explain Melville’s remark “So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense,” (372) meaning that if not prepares, men can lose their sense of self if they undergo such a traumatic enlightenment. Pip’s experience was traumatic and unexpected. This is the key difference between Pip and the Buddha: the Buddha was seeking such an experience, and all the pain and suffering he went through in the process was self-inflicted. Pip’s path to enlightenment was abrupt and unwanted, therefore causing his “insanity.”
3 Responses to “Pip and the Buddha”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Ooooooh, very interesting premise, lakinter. I don’t know that I quite agree with it, however. I don’t claim to be an expert on Buddhism, but my understanding of suffering is that it stems from desire, even at its most benign level. For instance, changing position in a seat to be more comfortable or itching are both seen as suffering. Pip seemed to be going through a lot more than that, which would be fine in its own right, but a Buddhist enlightenment, I think, is just an awareness that this suffering exists, and when it does occur (even a slight itch) to have the ability to be at peace with it. Pip post-“enlightenment” does not seem to have this peace. If he was nervous and emotional before, labeling himself as a “coward” does not seem to imply that he has gotten over what originally caused his suffering. It could, perhaps, if he only had the awareness of this as part of his personality, without being bothered by it, but it seems to me that he is in real anguish when he criticizes himself. After all, this cowardice would be a major shortcoming on a whaling voyage. Moreover, Pip’s understanding of his possible Buddhist enlightenment requires him to know of Buddhism. For a poorly educated young boy (fourteen, am I remembering correctly?), that is quite unlikely. Or do you maintain that there is some power in Pip having this “enlightenment,” without him knowing of it, as a rhetorical device? That may be possible, but I am more in favor of Pip going through a kind of purgatory, as someone I wish I knew’s first name pointed out in class. Certainly Pip went through a transformation during his time stranded in the ocean, but something more in the vain of Christianity and/or Melville’s obsession with madness and its relationship with wisdom strike me as more likely contenders for Melville’s “point.”
Interesting premise indeed. It’s possible that you’re observing the similarities between Buddhism (although I too am far from an expert) and the New England Transcendentalism that permeates the book. There sure are a lot of Biblical allusions, but Melville was also right in the middle of the whole Pantheistic movement lead by types like Thoreau and Emerson. They said that the way to something very much like Enlightenment was to isolate yourself in nature, where you could be “elevated” to a profound understanding of the universe and yourself. Pip does just that when he jumps out of the boat and is left behind with just himself and the ocean. While I don’t think that Melville was familiar with Buddhism, I do think you’re hitting on the interesting similarities that seem to arise in mystical religious thought across many different cultures.
All three of you are on to something, Laura, Ben, and Richard — we don’t have time to discuss this in lecture, but Melville WAS very interested in Buddhism and read up on it a lot. (That’s why he alludes to the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita throughout the text). So many of the philosophies he puts in the mouth of Ishmael are DELIBERATELY non-Christian, and very much a mishmash of Buddhist thought. Remember: as I’ve repeatedly mentioned, Melville was a religious skeptic, and though nominally a Christian, would have resented anyone calling him a religious man. But, naturally, like many Americans, and like all literary people, he was obsessed with the Hebrew/Christian Bible, whose very presence in this text outshines the vaguer references to Buddhist writings and teachings.